Apple may have completely scrapped iPhone SE 2

If you’ve been eagerly awaiting the iPhone SE 2… well, you may just have to go right on waiting.

According to a new report, citing case maker Olixar, the 5.8-inch iPhone XI, 6.5-inch iPhone XI Plus and 6.1-inch iPhone 9 are likely to be the only next-gen iPhones we’ll see this year. While the iPhone 9 will act as the affordable, budget-conscious iPhone for 2018, it means that unfortunately people who like the smaller 4-inch iPhone SE form factor will be disappointed.

As ever, believing stories from case makers can be problematic, given that they often rely on the same sources of rumor and gossip as the rest of us. Nonetheless, Olixar has been accurate in the past, and is using its current forecasts about the iPhone to inform which cases it moves ahead with manufacturing.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that the iPhone SE 2 is cancelled completely, but pushing it to 2019 probably isn’t a good sign. The first gen iPhone SE, which was basically a slight update on the 2013-era iPhone 5s, came out in Spring 2016. If its follow-up launches in 2019, that could conceivably be a full three years since its predecessor, causing a bit of marketplace confusion next to the usual yearly updates of the iPhone.

A cancelled experiment?

Cancelling an iPhone midway into production isn’t totally unheard of for Apple. While the company sticks to its schedule of annual upgrades, it will often work on multiple prototypes for these phones, before ditching several to focus on the finished model or models.

This also wouldn’t be the first time Apple has given up on a product line aimed at producing cheaper, non-premium iPhones for developing markets. In 2013, Apple introduced the colorful plastic iPhone 5c. Although it wound up selling reasonably well, it clearly didn’t do enough business for Apple to bother keeping it around for another year.

Would you be sad to not see an iPhone SE2? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.